Many produce products are harvested and packed in the field into containers which are ultimately purchased by the end consumer. Examples of such produce items include, but are not limited to, tomatoes, berries (including, but not limited to raspberries, strawberries, blueberries and so on), grapes, mushrooms, radishes and broccoli florets. Many of these produce items require substantial post-harvest cooling in order to enable shipping over long distances and to prolong shelf life. Additionally, increased fuel costs make high packing densities increasingly advantageous for reasons to be explained in greater detail below.
In use, a grower's harvesting crew harvests produce items of the type previously discussed directly from the plant in the field into the container. The containers are then loaded into trays, which contain a specific number of individual containers and the trays, when filled, are loaded onto pallets. The most common pallet used in the produce industry in the United States is the forty by forty-eight inch (40″×48″) wooden pallet, and the vast majority of produce handling, storage and shipping equipment is designed around pallets of this size.
After the pallets have been filled and loaded in the field, they are transported to shippers who perform a variety of post-harvest processes to enhance the marketability of the produce itself. For many types of produce, including berries, a significant packing evolution is the post-harvest cooling of the packed fruit. Indeed, berry shippers are often referred to as “coolers”. The process of cooling berries typically includes injecting a stream of cooling air into one side of a tray and thence through the individual baskets and around the berries stored therein. As the air cools the berries, it picks up heat which is exhausted from apertures on the opposite side of the tray.
In one common usage the produce is loaded into a one pound (1 lb.) container. Almost exclusively, eight (8) one pound baskets are loaded into a packaging tray. Such a configuration has existed since the introduction of the clear plastic packaging basket. All freight, storage, and sales pricing is calculated with this configuration in mind. Thus, in the industry there is considerable inertia and history behind this eight to a tray packing configuration.
Once trays are loaded commonly used packaging configuration are used. One such is referred to in the industry as the so-called “five-down” packaging configuration. It is referred to a five down package because at each layer of a pallet five “trays” are stacked. Each of the “trays” is loaded with produce containers filled with produce. In some approaches each of the trays has many vents all over each side of the tray or no vents at all. In such cases the prior art has not paid much attention to vent placement. The point of this prior philosophy being that more vents is better. Alternatively, in many systems no tray vents at all are used.
Importantly, none of the prior art technologies paid any attention to the cooling, packing, or shipping efficiencies of the various configurations. In particular, no attention was paid to integrating the tray vents with vents in the produce containers (in those cases where the produce containers actually had vents). No attention was given to the idea of specifically sized and shaped containers or to placed in the containers and trays in a specific alignment to maximize produce cooling or to maximize pallet content.
These same defects are known to be a problem with other pallet loading configurations. For example, pallet loading configuration such as a six-down system comprising six (6) trays per layer on the pallet. This implementation also employs an eight (8) one pound basket per tray loading configuration. Again, this means that 48 pounds of fruit are packed per layer on a standard 40 inch by 48 inch pallet. As currently employed, the current six down configuration suffers from sub-optimal tray and container packing. Neither the trays nor the containers shipped therein are fitted together properly. Thus, the package does not fully utilize the surface area of a 40″−48″ pallet. Therefore, current use packages and trays under-utilize the pallet. This frequently leads to still higher costs. This same problem is found to exist across all size ranges for produce shipping trays and containers.
The industry has been using trays loaded with eight one pound plastic containers per tray since the introduction of the modern plastic container by Sambrailo Packaging twenty years ago. There is significant resistance in the industry to any changes in packaging formats. This problem has prevented the industry from changing from the eight per tray format. All distributors, shippers, and manufacturers have relied upon containers particularly formatted to this eight container per tray.
What is needed is a packaging method and cooling configuration that can fully take advantage of the packing space available on a standard 40″×48″ pallet and also available using a standard footprint 16 inch by 20 inch tray and provide improved cooling performance over the prior art. Moreover, there is a need for an improved berry packing system which will significantly reduce the cooling time and cooling expense for the fruit contained in the baskets. To make such an improved system feasible, it must interface with commonly used and preferred facilities and apparatus (e.g., the previously discussed forty by forty eight inch pallets in current use in the grocery industry).
Accordingly, what is needed is a packaging configuration and approach that provides increased cooling performance and increased packing density using standard pallet formats.